


Under a Waning Moon

by RoseAndPsyche



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Cults, Gen, Golden Age (Narnia), Sacrifice, Salvation, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-01
Updated: 2014-11-14
Packaged: 2018-02-23 11:28:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2545910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseAndPsyche/pseuds/RoseAndPsyche
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." -Edmund Burke . Canon</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: The Tree

The tree stood like a mountain; silhouetted against the burning moon and marbled, hoary sky. Yet beneath its branches the silver dewed grass seemed to glow with a soft light, gentler than the starkness of the moon. Dark shapes flitted towards it, coils of rope over their shoulders, axes – blades gleaming – in their hands.

The tree was ancient, anyone could see that. The branches that spread so wide were gnarled and twisted, broken in places where younger branches had sprouted to fill the gaps. The rugged trunk stood like the waist of a giant, twisted as the branches. It was a noble tree and suddenly those that surrounded it stopped to stare at it, taking in the silverness of its old, tarnished beauty.

"Freedom!" a voice cried. They recognized it as _her_ voice, the high priestess, Isis, the dryad of the silver birch that grew by the waters of the Great River.

"Freedom!" they took up the chant, their tendrilled hair flying over their shoulders like leafy vines, "Freedom!"

They swung the axes from their shoulders and Isis made the first blow. Silver blade struck silver trunk and stuck. The tree remained stolid and unmoving as she wrestled it free and struck again. Now the others had started to swing their axes, blow upon blow on the wide scarred trunk. Chips flew and a strange sweet smell filled the air as the life blood of the tree began to trickle like white water from the depths of its heart.

"Freedom!" the cry intensified as they saw the tree shudder for the first time, branches swaying against the silent moon. Ropes flew in the air as they struggled to tie them to the branches, a sound like rock splitting filled the air as one of the larger branches broke loose and fell with a groan to the trampled grass.

Axes flew with fury and the smell grew stronger. There was a moan deep within the tree and slowly, nobly, it began to fall, wood splitting as it swept down in one last bow to its Creator.

There was silence at last as it lay, then a final cheer tore from their throats.

"Freedom!"

That tree, the tree called the Tree of Protection, the tree that had cursed them was dead. Now nothing barred Jadis, their queen, from taking the land that was hers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is so short, but I've often wondered what happened to the Tree of Protection and when Rose came up with this idea one day, I was hooked. There is a story to go with it, but it is only half thought up and may never happen at all. If it does, it will probably be posted in the fall. It's partially based on Stonehenge.
> 
> ~Psyche
> 
> Disclaimer: All rights stolen from C. S. Lewis; any similarity between his characters and ours is fully intended. We have no intention of giving them back. ;)


	2. The Silver Colt

And he shall sit [as] a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the LORD an offering in righteousness. ~ Malachi 3:3

* * *

Eastern Narnia, 116 years after the fall of the tree

* * *

 

Corin turned his horse's head and rode back into the forest. He was sixteen years old, very nearly seventeen, and the younger son of King Lune. The older son of King Lune was just now trying to get his dog, Cabal, loose from a brier bush. Cabal was a sight hound, only six months old, but already very tall.

 

"Stop trying to eat my ear," Cor, the older son of King Lune, complained. Cabal laughed, tongue hanging and would have wagged his tail, only it was rather too badly stuck in the bush. With gentle hands, Cor untangled Cabal's long black coat, then inspected the dog's pads for thorns. Cabal's whole body wagged as he tried to make up for lost time.

 

Cor sat back on his heels and laughed, then stood up and mounted his horse.

 

"If that dog hadn't held us up we might have caught the stag," Corin grumbled, then whistled and his own brachet, Edn, turned away from the leaf she was inspecting and looked at him.

 

"We'll find another one," Cor said. "He was trying."

 

"He could have gone around the bush."

 

"Dogs never go around things," Cor said grinning, then turned his mount and urged her forward on the narrow footpath that wound through the massive trunks of the trees. Llamrei was bay, but her coat was brilliant as polished copper. Her lineage went back to the desert mares the Calormens used as Calvary mounts, her sire was Ashquar, Queen Lucy's prized stallion. She was small, but very strong with tremendous stamina.

 

"Why is it that I always end up behind?" Corin asked, snatching his horse's head away as it attempted to eat a young oak that stood beside the path.

 

"Because I'm older," Cor said.

 

"Only twenty minutes," Corin countered.

 

"Well I tried to be the younger one, but Father wouldn't have it," Cor said.

 

A little brown wren high above them danced among the branches of a maple trilling with happiness. The wind whispered softly and the sunlight dappled the dark leaves underhoof. Quite soon, they left the forest and were climbing steeply the side of a hill. The path, narrow and rocky, led them around the edge of the hill, then began to descend into a valley.

 

"Stag's gone," Corin said grimly.

 

"Long gone," Cor replied happily. Stag or no stag, he loved the countryside. He turned Llamrei off the path and she swung forward down the hillside, enjoying the soft grass underfoot. Corin followed absently, his fair hair blowing in the wind. Across the valley and up another hill in the distance, they could see white dots, motionless on the brilliant green. Sheep.

 

To the right and below them, they heard the sound of many hooves beating the turf. Cor drew up his horse and sat watching. One mare, a little one, emerged from the trees, her head up, her wild mane blowing in the wind. A moment later, two mares, then three followed her, heads down towards the grass. More came, their foals skittering behind them, their yearlings keeping their distance. Most of them were very small, not much bigger than ponies, but some of them were taller. The stallion himself was tall and black as night, his coat sparked with fire.

 

"Look at them all," Cor said.

 

Corin looked.

 

"What do you say about the stallion?" Cor continued. "He looks like King Peter's great-horse, Ares."

 

"He has a roman nose," Corin noted.

 

They sat in silence, letting their own mounts graze. The wild herd spread out across the plain, stepping delicately over the grass. Some of the foals flopped down to sleep and mares stood head to tail, nibbling along each other's withers.

 

"We-" Corin began.

 

"Wait," Cor said, "Look at that one!"

 

"Which one?" Corin asked, his patience thinning, "There are a lot of ones."

 

"That tall gray," Cor said, "That colt there."

 

Corin looked. A horse the color of tarnished silver was wandering away from the herd, his head low, smelling for clover.

 

"It's probably a mare," Corin said.

 

"No mare has a crest that high," Cor said, "He's probably a two-year-old and the stallion is about ready to kick him out of the herd."

 

"That's neither here nor there," Corin said. "I want my stag."

 

"I want that horse," Cor replied calmly.

 

Corin stared at him, "You mean to catch it?"

 

"How else?"

 

"I'm going to look for that stag," Corin growled turning his horse away.

 

"Be my guest," Cor said. "I probably won't be back tonight."

 

"Oh look here Cor," Corin said turning his horse back around, "I can't just leave you behind to go wondering around after a horse. What would father say? Just be sensible and come look for that stag."

 

"No," Cor said.

 

"Aw, Cor!" Corin exclaimed. "I'm sure father would give you another horse if you wanted one!"

 

"If you want your stag, go get your stag, I'm after that horse." Cor said.

 

Corin shrugged. "Don't go get lost."

 

"I never do," Cor said, he urged his horse forward a step, then pulled her up and looked back. "Will you take Cabal with you?"

 

"No!" Corin said, turning his horse around. "I'll never catch a stag with that flea bag along!"

 

"I'll be able to catch a horse even less," Cor said.

 

Corin looked fierce, "Oh, all right!"

 

"Thanks very much," Cor said. "I'll let you ride him after I've caught him."

 

"Look here," Corin began feeling a little too generous, "I'll help you cut him out of the herd."

 

Cor grinned his thanks, than urged his horse forward and let her amble down the hill. As he came into sight, some of the mares looked up, but he was up wind from them and they weren't really alarmed. Corin tied the two dogs to a bush so they wouldn't get in the way, then cantered around to the other side of the valley and began to make his way down.

 

They were within a hundred yards of the horses before they spooked. The lead mare smelled them first. She snorted and with her mane flying, bolted towards the woods. Fear rippled through the herd like lightning and the earth shook as they leaped after her.

 

The two boys urged their horses forward into a gallop, Cor angling Llamrei between the gray colt and the herd. Corin let loose a blood chilling war scream and the herd veered off like running water. The gray colt sought to follow them, but Cor's mare matched his run. She was small, but fleet of foot.

 

The herd melted into the forest and the gray colt swerved away from Cor and began to mount the slope of the hill towards the nearest safety he could find, woods.

 

Cor looked back once, he saw Corin's horse, a flash of chestnut against the green as Corin drove the other horses into the forest.

 

~o*o~

 

The silver colt twisted through the trees like a phantom. His every sense urged him forward, urged him to search for the safety of the herd. A strange creature pursued him, half horse, half something else. The colt slowed to a trot and the creature slowed as well.

 

~o*o~

 

Cor watched the long silver tail of the colt slipping through the shadows. It would be hours perhaps, before the colt would slow and turn to face his pursuer. When he was small, Cor used to lie on his stomach on a hillside in Calormen and watch the wild herds that grazed the sparse grass beside the sea. Sometimes, a young horse would challenge the dominant mare and she would turn and drive him from the herd, farther and farther. At last, the young horse would turn to her, begging her forgiveness and she would turn away and go back to the herd, showing he was forgiven. Cor planned to use this same technique, because he knew that if he drove this horse far enough, it would turn and follow him.

 

He kept Llamrei to a swinging trot. He would catch the colt eventually, but it would take time. If he tried to catch him with speed he would drive him father away. He simply had to wait. Horses are incredibly enduring. Llamrei was of desert stock, those wild, fleet footed horses that could travel more than a hundred miles in a span of twenty four hours and Llamrei was in her prime. Cor himself wasn't particularly heavy. He was sixteen and tall for his age, but not nearly as tall as he would be.

 

The morning sun moved across the sky in liquid glory and always Cor followed the silver tail as it slipped between the trees. He could see the colts ears were pricked forward, signifying his boundless energy.

 

~o*o~

 

Around noon, the silver colt broke from the trees and paused by a stream to drink, but almost at once, the human on the red horse came into the open. With a snort, the colt started away, settling into a steady trot.

 

There was a dull glitter on mail, a gleam of tarnished silver, the flash of precious stones in the hilts of their swords; sparking like fire. The two warriors stood opposite each other, seizing each other up through the visors of their helmets.

 

Then, with an unspoken word between them, they raised their swords again and the sweet song of fine steel on steel rang in the silent air, the sunlight rippling up their flashing blades.

 

The spectators were silent now. As the hours had passed, they had slowly gathered in a ring around the fighters, their breath stopping as brilliant stroke met brilliant parry. The two fighters circled each other like artists, their breath coming ragged in the morning air as each attempted to break through the other's defenses. They had slowed, each swing requiring the last dregs of their exhaustion, yet still the battled continued.

 

At last the slighter of the two lowered the point of his sword until it touched the ground and bowed his head. He could no longer summon the strength to raise his weapon.

 

The spectators leaned closer as if one man, the beauty of the battle they had just witnesses seared into their souls.

 

The victor saluted his opponent, the sun dashing up his blade. He was a giant of a man, towering nearly a head above most of his companions. He pulled his helmet off, revealing a strong and craggy face. It would have been a fearsome face, but for the brown eyes that added both warmth and youth to an otherwise solemn and noble visage.

 

"I say, Ed," his voice echoed around the buildings that stood around him. "All done in? How about a coffee break?"

 

"Sounds like a plan," Edmund said, as he fought for his breath. Though tall, he was both shorter and slighter than his brother and his features were considerably finer; while Peter's eyes were brown, his were piercingly blue. With shaking hands he sheathed his sword and stood looking at his brother, a slight smile playing around his lips. "You fight like a grizzly, Pete. I don't think anyone could get you down."

 

"Oh, look here, Ed, I was struggling there. You almost had me," Peter called with a laugh, running his blade back into its sheath with a soft hiss.

 

"Fat chance," Edmund said dryly. "I was demonstrating my last dregs of I-don't-want-to-be-killed-by-my-furious-brother."

 

"It wasn't that bad," Peter said. "But you do need to work on that annoying habit you have of calling insults when you should be concentrating."

 

"I stopped doing that hours ago," Edmund pointed out.

 

Peter stared at him for a moment, then turned, looking with widening eyes at the group of stable boys and armorors standing around, hesitantly watching.

 

"I say," he said. "How long has it been, then?"

 

"You've been fighting since mid morning, sire," a faun said.

 

"What time is it now?" Peter asked, pulling off his leather gauntlets and shoving them under his arm as he flexed stiff fingers. "Time for lunch?"

 

"It's nearer tea time, sire."

 

"I could have told you that," Edmund muttered under his breath. "Dimwit."

 

"Tea time?" Peter threw an arm around his brother's neck. "Time does fly, doesn't it. Did Cor and Corin ever get back? And its dimwit this time, eh?"

 

"Not yet, sire."

 

"Oh blast," Peter said emphatically. A flicker of concern passed Edmund's face as he glanced at him. Peter looked at him a moment, hesitating, then turned.

 

"Someone bring my horse, will you? I'm going to find them." He slapped Edmund on the shoulder. "You should have said something about the time."

 

"When?" Edmund asked sarcastically. "While you were swinging your sword at my head? I was a little busy... I think I was saying something about a dimwit sometime in the near past."

 

Peter ignored him, "See if the girls don't have lunch or tea or whatever ready when we get back. I'm near famished."

 

"You always are," Edmund said with a snicker.

 

"Snickering isn't allowed on these premises." Peter said shortly, summoning all his dignity.

 

"Says who?" Edmund inquired.

 

"We'll draw it up in writing and stamp it with our seal," Peter said with half a grin. "Now stop that, you have your I-am-so-wise-and-you-are-so-dumb expression on."

 

"Why don't you quit chattering and take your royal we off to other parts."

 

This time it was Peter who snickered.

 

Corin gave up on the stag, Cabal's wild headlong dashes into bushes made hunting impossible and Corin tried to put a good face on it and tell himself that he really didn't mind (he did, but that didn't matter).

 

Corin loved visiting Narnia, Archenland, for him, seemed altogether too tame and familiar. There was something almost otherworldly about the green of the ragged Narnian slopes and the whispering song of the Narnian wind as it ran a hand through the young leaves of the aspens. Every year, he and Cor and their father, King Lune, and a small entourage were invited to Narnia to spend a few weeks at the summer retreat of the Narnian Kings. It was a laughing time with croquet in the garden and long gallops under the copper sun and lantern lit parties under a sliver of silver moon.

 

The weight of responsibility pressed heavy on the shoulders of Narnians and Archenlanders alike and these few weeks seemed to take years away from them.

 

Corin whistled and watched as Cabal and Edn came galumphing out of a nearby bush to wag all around him, tongues hanging.

 

"Come on then, you hooligans," Corin said. "Or we'll be late for tea."

 

Late wouldn't be acceptable. King Peter and King Edmund had prodigious appetites and all the best pastries would be gone if he didn't get there in a hurry. With a strong leg on his horse, he galloped up the green hill and made the ridge, where a wild tree stood tangled in the wind.

 

Afternoon light was stretching in golden shafts, slanting across the world it lit. He saw a horseman cantering in the haze, horse a black silhouette in the light. Corin spooked his horse into a gallop with a shattering whoop and in a moment more, had met the horseman.

 

"Hullo Peter!" he called, dragging his horse around.

 

"Hullo, old chap," Peter said, lounging in the saddle. "Didn't catch your stag?"

 

"Cor's fleabag got in the way," Corin said. "Have they served tea yet?"

 

"Don't know, I left before then," Peter said. "Where's Cor?"

 

"Catching a horse." Corin said distastefully.

 

"Doing what?"

 

"We came across a herd of wild horses and he had to have one," Corin said. "I couldn't stop him."

 

"I hope he gets it," Peter said and looked across the valley, the wind combing his hair. For a moment, Corin thought he saw a look of worry on the King's face, but it was gone in an instant.

 

"Are you hungry?" Peter asked, with a grin as he glanced at Corin.

 

"Is that a question?"

 

"No, I suppose not."

 

"Good, I was beginning to be worried."

 

Peter turned his horse's head, "Well, me hearty, shall we go see if Edmund left us any tea?"

 

"I'll say," Corin said. "Race you?"

 

Peter grinned and saluted him, then urged his steed forward, sending it flying down the hill, black mane streaming. Corin was a moment behind him. The valleys shifted and changed before them, seeming to move while they remained still. Their horses stretched beneath them as they reached the road and pounded down it, swerving to avoid the lonely, plodding farm cart that traversed down it. The trees were sparse in that place, but they passed through a little forest and at last, before them, they saw the reflection of old walls in water and saw the fountain leap before a noble house that stood among its gardens in a sweeping valley.

 

Peter lost the race because he pulled up his horse. Corin didn't, but sent his flying over a green wall to crash wildly through the table that had been set up outside. Queen Susan screamed and King Edmund barely caught the bridle of the rearing horse to bring it to a halt.

 

There was a moment of silence as the napkins floated down and Susan regained her composure and Lucy tried not to die of laughter.

 

"Woops," Corin said meekly and the next moment his father hauled him down from the saddle by the collar and shook a few times for good measure.

 

"You idiot!" Aravis exclaimed, struggling to her feet from where she had fallen, bowled over by the flying rump of the horse.

 

"Sorry," Corin said.

 

"You ought to be," King Lune said sternly.

 

"By Jove, Corin," Peter said, leading his horse around the hedge. "You need to apply the brakes sometimes."

 

"They broke the other day," Corin said, trying to wrap himself up in some shreds of dignity. "I've been meaning to have them replaced."

 

"Of all the lame brained, idiotic… this takes the cake," Aravis muttered.

 

"Cake?" Corin asked eagerly. "Can I have some?"

 

"Please, please, please?" Peter added in a falsetto.

 

Susan laughed.

 

As the day wore on, the distance between them lessened and the silver colt stopped more and more often to look behind him. At these times, Cor would pull Llamrei up and swing her away and they would observe each other over a length of ground. But the silver colt would always turn and continue on, his hooves beating as regularly as a drum.

 

The sky began to grow pale and the shadows were long and the moon stood across from the sun. Cor began to call the colt Lloergan, moonlight in the old speech, and felt almost at once that it was more his then ever. He called the name over the distance that separated them and he saw the silver ears prick backwards, then forwards at the sound of his voice.

 

After that, he kept up a regular conversation with the colt. Llamrei thought it was for her and she kept her black tipped ears pricked backwards to hear what he said. The colt drifted over the ground like a ghost as darkness began to fall.

 

A cool wind blew from the forest behind them and swept the horses' manes and Cor's golden hair. He shivered and tried to forget his hunger. Night fell and darkness and the stars glittered across the sky like wheat thrown at planting time. The green hills faded to blackness and the lonely oak they passed seemed half dipped in silver. Overhead burned The Hunter, his club upraised and rubies set in his belt. His hound followed on his heels, coursing the heavens, his eye gleaming bright.

 

As it grew later, Cor's tiredness left him, but Llamrei was growing weary. At last, he dismounted and ran beside her, imaging himself The Hunter tracking a shooting star across the night sky.

 

Llamrei's neck was damp under his hand and she was breathing hard. Lloergan floated forward like a disembodied spirit clothed full in the moon's brilliant rays. The colt slowed to a walk and Cor did the same. Every time the colt halted, Cor did the same.

 

On they went, on for hours and Cor, at last exhausted, pulled himself back into the saddle. The night was growing old, surely morning would come soon.


	3. Zardeena

* * *

_Across the margent of the world I fled,_

_And troubled the gold gateways of the stars,_

_Smiting for shelter on their clanged bars;_

_Fretted to dulcet jars_

_And silvern chatter the pale ports o' the moon._

_I said to dawn, Be sudden; to eve, Be soon;_

_With thy young skyey blossoms heap me over_

_From this tremendous Lover!_

_…Halts by me that footfall;_

_Is my gloom, after all,_

_Shade of His hand, outstreched caressingly?_

_"Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,_

_I am He Whom thou seekest!_

_Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me."_

~Francis Thompson

* * *

"So what is it? You broke me out of bed for some reason," Peter said, propping his feet up on his desk and trying not to yawn. He glanced out the window and could tell by the stars that it was past midnight. "I take it you've gotten a new report?"

"It's all very peculiar," Edmund said pacing the floor before Peter's desk. "It's only these particular kinds of animals that are disappearing; dogs, guinea fowl, horses, bears, doves, deer, and bees."

"And talking animals?"

"It seems to be indiscriminate," Edmund said. "Both have been going missing. They go wandering away and never come back."

"Double blast," Peter said at last, very eloquently. "I think I've got to go out and look for Cor."

"Humans aren't disappearing," Edmund pointed out.

"He's on a horse."

"Good point," Edmund said. "And… it's All Hallow's Eve tomorrow."

Peter looked up.

"Strange things happen on All Hallow's Eve."

A soft knock came at the door and when Peter called admittance, the door opened and King Lune stepped into the room. He came across the floor to lean on Peter's desk.

"Something's happened, hasn't it?" he said. "I saw the way your demeanors changed this morning and how you went out to meet Corin. Please be frank and tell me, I'm beginning to worry about Cor being out."

"Oh, I doubt  _he's_  in any danger," Edmund said, sitting down on Peter's desk. "It's just these rumors we've been getting. Peculiar happenings west of here, we've been getting reports of livestock disappearing these past few weeks. Today we were alarmed because two talking horses have gone missing from a town near here."

"Any ideas as to what's happening?" King Lune asked.

"Not really," Edmund said. "We only have one name to link with it."

"Eh?"

"Zardeena," Edmund said. "Mean anything to you?"

King Lune shrugged, "Sounds foreign. Do you know what it is?"

"Haven't the faintest," Edmund said with half a smile. "I'm guessing (from my own superior knowledge of these things) that it's some sort of secret cult."

"Oh, aye, genus," Peter said. "Well, if Cor isn't back in the morning. I'll head out to look for him."

"I'll accompany you," King Lune said.

"As will I," Edmund agreed.

~o*o~

It was only when Cor saw the dew shimmering on the grass like diamonds that he realized the stars had gone and the sky was beginning to grow light.

Lloergan had led him into another forest and he could see the bark on the trees more clearly now. The early birds were beginning to sing and the world was beginning to come alive. Lloergan vanished behind a giant oak and as Cor rounded it, he saw before him an open glen. Lloergan had stopped in the middle of it and turned to face him, head down. Cor pulled up Llamrei and sat watching him. He was a beautiful horse with heavy silver mane. In a few years, he would turn as white as a dove's wing.

Cor turned Llamrei half away and Lloergan took a step forward, then two and very slowly followed the mare, his ears back in defeat. Cor rode slowly around the glen, Lloergan following, but keeping his distance. He had at last figured out that he would cease to be followed if he would only follow his pursuer.

"Hello, horse," Cor said in a friendly manner. "I'm not going to eat you, if that's what you think."

Lloergan's ears pricked towards him.

"I understand you, lad," Cor said on impulse. "I know what you feel like. I was wild once, like an untamed horse and I was running from my pursuer. I realized at last that I had to turn and face him and it was the best thing I ever did in my life. I thought I was in shadow, but it was the shadow of his caressing. I thought I was lost, but it was only because I ran from him. I thought no one would welcome me, but no one would welcome me who did not welcome him. Do you understand?"

Lloergan lowered his head and began to graze. No horse grazes unless he has no fears.

"So you see, my lad. You and I, we're not so different as you think. I ran from Aslan, you ran from me." Cor said. "He followed me across the south of Calormen and the desert of Tashbaan and across the green hills of Archenland. I'm glad you were not so stubborn as I."

Slowly Cor reached down and ran his hand along Lloergan's shoulders as a wild horse might. It sent a shiver through him to touch something that would have killed him just a day ago.

"And your story, lad?" Cor asked, "I've told you mine – at least, all I know about me."

Lloergan raised his head again and looked at him. Cor held out his hand and Lloergan stretched out his head and lipped it hesitantly.

"Born under the sun in the wild forest?" Cor asked, "Learned to walk when you were an hour old? To run after a day?"

Lloergan looked over his shoulder, then back at Cor and Cor, moving slowly, pulled a coil of rope from his saddle bag and made a loop in one end. Lloergan turned towards him and he slipped the loop over the colt's wild head.

It could as easily have been a snake.

Lloergan jerked backwards, sinking into his haunches. His nostrils flared, his eyes were wide. He shook his head, then rose into the air on his hind legs with a shrill whinny. He pawed the air as if to kill the thing that bound him.

Cor held the other end of the rope steadily. He jerked it when Lloergan reared and let it loose again when he came down, until at last the colt learned that the rope would not hurt him if he stood quietly.

"There now," Cor rubbed Lloergan's forehead with his knuckles and Lloergan watched his, curiosity alight in his eyes. Leaning over, Cor made another loop and slipped it over Lloergan's nose. Lloergan tossed his head, eyes wide. He half reared, then came down again and rubbed his head against his knee, trying to peel the improvised halter off.

"It won't hurt you unless you pull against it," Cor explained. "It's as simple as that, lad."

Lloergan went back to grazing and Cor tied the end of the lead rope to Llamrei's saddle, then swung his leg over the mare's head and slid to the ground. He almost fell. His legs felt as weak as jelly. He had been in the saddle for a night and half a day and his body howled in pain. He sat down on the ground and stretched out his legs.

Lloergan stared down at him a bit of grass hanging from his mouth. It puzzled him that this creature was so small suddenly. Cor laughed at his expression, then stood up and stroked Lloergan's neck. He ran his hands over Lloergan's whithers over and over again, then pulled himself over Lloergan's back until he was half over him.

Lloergan looked back at him, wide eyed, then slowly walked in a circle as far as his lead rope would allow him. He was breathing hard and Cor slid down again. He stroked him again and talked to him more, not saying anything really intelligible; it was the tone of his voice that mattered. Llamrei was still grazing hard.

Cor pulled himself up on Lloergan's back again and this time knelt there, balancing. Lloergan began his pacing again and Cor lost his balance and slid down. Lloergan stared at him again. He wasn't frightened, he just didn't understand.

At last, Cor pulled himself up again and this time, he got a leg over to the other side and sat there, waiting. Lloergan stood like a rock, head up, ears pricked back. Slowly, he looked over his shoulder and smelled the toe of Cor's boot. They stayed like that for close on five minutes, then Lloergan resumed grazing and Cor slid down again.

Cor led both horses across the glen to where a lonely rowan tree stood. He tied Lloergan to a branch, then unsaddled Llamrei and turned her loose to graze. She wondered slowly across the glen and Cor watched her go. She would come when he whistled.

Cor freed the saddle blanket from where it lay under the saddle. Lloergan smelled it, then nosed at the grass on the base of the rowan. Cor rubbed Lloergan's neck with the blanket, then began flapping it. Lloergan jerked back, staring, nostrils wide. Cor let it touch the colt and Lloergan shivered. Cor walked around the colt, still flapping the blanket and taking pride in snapping his wrist just so to make the blanket crack properly. He draped the blanket over the colts back and let it lie. Lloergan glanced back at it nervously, then paid it no more mind.

Cor stood back, watching him, then stooped and picked up the saddle. He took a deep breath, then lowered it down on Lloergan's back. Lloergan continued to graze and Cor gently pulled the girth strap up under the colt's belly. Lloergan looked around nervously, then went back to grazing. Cautiously, Cor tightened the girth two holes, then jumped backwards. Lloergan's head went down and his hind legs went up and Cor hurriedly untied the lead rope and dragged Lloergan into the open where he could buck without injuring himself.

It took Lloergan only four or five bucks to decide him that if the saddle were going to kill him it would have done it by now. He immediately went back to grazing. The bridle came a bit more easily, there was some chomping on the bit and head shaking, but at last he decided it wasn't so terrible after all.

At last, Cor swung astride again and Lloergan stepped forward cautiously, desperately wondering what this was all about.

~o*o~

They went back through the woods and presently came out into the open again. They found themselves on the edge of a green slope leading down to the lake and Cor realized that they had not traveled in a straight line at all, that in the night, they had come around the head of the lake.

The horses stood knee deep in the heather and Cor looked across the lake. The clouds had spread across the sun and the lake reflected them in misty symmetry.

Below them wound a road, though not so much of a road as a narrow dirt path toiling slowly up the hillside. There was a traveler on it, someone tall, in a dark cape, with a long ash staff. The traveler turned and Cor saw a beautiful face and hair caught up in a knot, but pouring loose. He caught his breath, because he had expected it to be a man.

She reached him and he bowed in the saddle.

~o*o~

They had left at the crack of dawn, but now day was lifting around them, the world rising green in gentle slopes leading up to the mountains in the west. The horses cantered in single file, Peter leading, his eye on the swinging tail of the talking hound that they had brought to track Cor's scent. King Lune followed, then Edmund and last of all, Corin.

He'd woken early and followed them down to the stables, whistling as he went into his horse's stall to groom and saddle him.

"Corin?" Peter had said, looking at him over his own steed's gleaming back. "You can't come!"

"Why not?" Corin asked, the brush running softly over the contours and swirling eddies of Dunbar's chestnut coat.

"He'll probably come whether we tell him to or not," Edmund had commented, catching his horse's head to fit the bit in his mouth.

"So I will," Corin had said with a laugh as he latched the stall door and swung the saddle over his shoulder.

"It can take days to catch a horse," Peter commented later when King Lune urged his horse next to him.

"Cor's not the sort of leave anything half done," Edmund added.

"This one's bigger than the last one he brought home," Corin said. "It probably will last longer."

Lord Stagbane, the great grey coated hound, raced on ahead, his bell like cries urging them on. He could talk the tail off a donkey, but when he was on the scent he was all dog and rarely ever spoke but in barks and whines. He had picked up Cor's scent in the valley where Corin had last seen him and had been in full cry since.

The world was alive with color that morning. The searing breath of winter had touched the leaves on the trees, but the air was still warm and the horses were vivid in the light. Peter's black and Edmund's chestnut ran together and the others brought up the rear.

Lord Stagbane paused in a large clearing, his tail wagging as he turned to them.

"He's caught his horse, then!" he exclaimed happily. "Here he met with it."

They dismounted and kneeling on the grass, read the signs of Cor's taming of the horse in the upturned earth underfoot. Peter's sharp eyes marked the place where the horse had been tied to the tree by the rubbed bark and he turned Corin's attention to it.

"When you're tracking an enemy every sign is important, no matter how insignificant." Peter explained as he followed the horse's tracks around the meadow.

"You think he's my enemy, now, do you?" Corin asked and skipped away when Peter made a grab for him.

"We must press on," King Lune said at last, swinging up on his gray. "He can't be too far ahead now."

~o*o~

"Where have they gone, anyway?" Aravis asked, setting her teacup gently down on the inlaid table. They had just gotten back from picking apples in the orchard and were in the library, sitting in deep chairs, their faces flushed from the nip of the autumn air and their hair flying wild. The ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner, which had been so loud to them when they had first come in, had melted into the sunlight pooling on the parquet floor and only when they concentrated on it could they hear it.

The library was quite large, with a high molded plaster ceiling and a deep fireplace. The walls were books from floor to ceiling with a rolling ladder pushed out of the way in a corner. Cor and Corin's dogs were lying in front of the fire; Edn was asleep, silken silver hair in a drift around her; with her head on her paws. Beside her, supremely alert, was Cabal, a massive deerhound, brindle black with a splash of white on his chest.

"Cor never came back from finding his horse," Lucy explained, tossing aside the newspaper she had been scanning. "And Peter decided they would go meet him."

"Well," Aravis said. "Anything to have Corin out of my hair for a few hours- both of them, actually." she added rather savagely.

"What in the world were you arguing about this time?" Lucy asked curiously.

"He was trying to tell me how to ride my horse," Aravis said primly. "I've been riding since before I could walk."

"Oh, Aravis," Lucy said with a laugh.

"Don't you too start!" Aravis exclaimed.

Susan was silent, her knitting forgotten on her lap. She alone of the three knew why Peter had felt it so urgent to find Cor; thoughtfully she picked up her teacup, but forgot to drink from it before she set it down again.

"Aravis," she said at last. "Have you ever heard the name, 'Zardeena'?"

"But, of course!" Aravis said with a laugh. "Zardeena is the lady of the night. The goddess of virginity. In Calormen girls about to be married always had to make sacrifices to her and her ardent followers never married and would not look at men. She is a huntress and a warrior."

"I've received the latest post from my contact," Susan said at last. "I've been doing a bit of investigation myself and a bear has vanished this time."

"A bear?" Lucy said, "Why would a bear vanish? What don't I know?"

"Animals of all sorts have been vanishing, bears, horses, dogs," Susan sighed. "The only name we can link to it is Zardeena."

Aravis had stiffened and looked at her closely. "Talking animals?"

"Both," Susan said.

"I wish you had told me before," Aravis said. "Those are the animals that are sacrificed to the goddess."

Susan stared at her in horror, then looked up as the door opened and a maid curtseyed.

"Your majesties, a visitor to see you, she was most insistent."

"Very well," Susan said.

It was a dryad who walked through the door; they recognized her as an aspen by the gold she wore. As the leaves change, the garments of the dryad change, until winter when she sleeps and does not wake again until spring. They could almost see leaves swirling around her feet as she walked through the sun shafts that slanted across the room.

"Your majesties."

She had come a long way, they saw, her hair was windblown, her feet bear and raw from running. "Your majesties! I can bear it no longer; I felt I must come to you!"

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've ever read Shy Boy by Monty Roberts you'll know that, as crazy as it seems, you can catch a horse by following it long enough. In a wild herd, the lead mare often drives younger horses away when they act up. By swinging around and turning her body to them she lets them know that they are forgiven.
> 
> Strangely enough, horse whisperers are able to use the same technique, finding that they can use body language alone to tame wild horses. Horses are not naturally aggressive animals, they like to be subdued and using strong body language around them is very important. Horses can't smell fear, but they can see it. They're like little children, they push you as far as they can, because they are looking for a limit.
> 
> ~Psyche


	4. Pair Dadeni

_When it is darkest, men see the stars._

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

* * *

_When hope is lost, a man must carry on in despair. When he is down, he must get up. When it is dark, he must make a light. When the floods of misfortune threaten to swamp him, he must swim… and if he must sink, he must sink with his eyes on the hope that rises like a sun on the horizon of his soul._

Cor's mind ran in circles around him and these words slipped back to him from the recesses of his soul. They had been written by Stormrunner, prophet of Narnia many years ago, but as he lay there in a half sleep he couldn't remember how many. He saw his father, laughing, standing in an open doorway with light behind him and he felt a hand on his shoulder and realized that it was his brother Corin.

"Why don't we go hunting?" Corin's voice seemed very far away. "King Peter saw a stag yesterday on the ridge between the Tanglewood and the Avon. We might find one and have venison for dinner."

"Do you want to come too?" he'd turned eagerly to Aravis where she stood behind him. They had had an argument about her horse and they still hadn't made up.

"No I don't," she said stiffly.

King Lune laughed. "Look's like it's just the menfolk. Just be back in good time."

Back in good time? How long ago was that?

Cor was suddenly awake, his eyes fluttering open. He was sitting upright, he thought, his back to a tree, in a quiet place, but the strange thing was that he couldn't move, not matter how he tried.

It seemed that people stood all around him, tall, straight people, in dark cloaks, silent as dawn, weathering day as they had the night. Yet as he looked at them and saw that they did not move, he realized that they were not people at all, but massive stones standing upright in the ground. Some had other stones lying on top of them, but most were free standing, worn smooth by years of wind and rain.

The mist coiled through them and he saw faint shadows moving through it, the aura of torchlight in their hands and he knew he was not alone. Lloergan stood near him, almost one with the mist, straining at the rope that had held him to the stone, half rearing and swinging away, his weight slowly fraying the rope where it rubbed.

Llamrei was nowhere in sight and Cor remembered that he had not tied her, but had trusted her to follow him where ever he went. She must have gone, then, too frightened to stay.

Beyond him, the grass was even, stretching in a perfect circle between the stones. The mist was rising from the ground, hovering low and spiraling around him where he sat. There was a strange smell to it and as he looked he realized that there was a crevice in the earth running across the circle like an arrow through an apple.

In Calormen, he had always learned that such things existed, that there were cracks in the earth. He had been told that they were the entrances to the land of the dead.

But how had he come there? Slowly, carefully, he recounted what had passed with following the horse, the night spent riding under the moon and at last, in the misty edges of his memory, he remember the woman clad in a cloak, beyond that, he did not remember.

~o*o~

"Calm yourself and tell us what happened!" Susan cried, rising from her chair.

"Oh your majesty!" the aspen dryad sank down on the floor, pressing the hem of Susan's skirt to her lips. "What horrors are conducted! I should have come sooner, but I feared for my life. Isis, the dryad of the silver birch, has returned. She has gathered a host of dryads at the Standing Stones of the West."

"Who is she?" Susan asked, kneeling down on the floor.

"She was the dryad that spearheaded the razing of the Tree of Protection more than a hundred years ago, she is a long liver and many a year has plotted to take Narnia again."

"She cannot repeat what Jadis did," Susan said comfortingly.

"But she means to call up Zardeena, the Lady of the Night," the aspen cried. "Jadis' power was not her own and Isis is only hand maiden to another. In every century, a new evil one arises, but the power is always the same."

"No dryad, no matter how martial, could command enough troops to overcome Narnia." Lucy said sharply.

"Have you never heard of the deathless warriors?" the aspen cried. "Isis has acquired Pair Dadeni from the giants of the north and dearly did she pay for it. She learned too late that the giants had cast a spell over it before it will work and at last she has found the answer."

"What is Pair Dadeni?" Susan asked.

"It is the silver cauldron," the aspen said, her voice hushed. "It can be used to revitalized the dead into soulless, deathless warriors."

There was silence in the room and the sunlight that had streamed through the window and painted the floor had tarnished and turned silver and cold hands clutched at their hearts. Aravis felt herself suddenly an outsider as her two companions suddenly became two queens. Susan was tall, but suddenly she seemed taller and her grey eyes were no longer gentle, but hard as steel. Lucy, too, had grown straighter and somehow older.

"And the giants cast a spell over it?" Lucy asked, breaking the silence.

"It can only be used after one of royal blood and thrown into it," the aspen's slender hands were shaking now as she clasped them, as if she were praying that they do something. "And oh, your majesties! On my journey I saw your royal brothers traveling west and I am sore afraid, for the dryads have no love for men and would sooner kill them as speak to them."

"Cor!" Aravis breathed, standing up herself.

"How many dryads are assembled in this place?" Susan asked.

"Near fifty," the aspen said. "And tomorrow… tomorrow is All Hallows Eve!"

"How can we find the Standing Stones of the West?"

~o*o~

Lord Stagbane had stopped in puzzlement, one foreleg cocked, the wind blowing his ears.

"Here they twain," he said at last, circling slowly, his nose twitching. "I know not which horse he was riding."

"His horse must have escaped him," Corin said. "That's a pity."

"The horse would not have left him, not after that," Peter said swinging down from his horse to join Edmund on the ground.

"Look here," Edmund said, tracing Llamrei's hoof prints in the dirt of the road, then the larger ones of the wild horse, "She ran while the other remained."

"Was he riding it so soon, then?" Peter asked straightening. "But why would she run? I have never seen a horse that loved her master so much as Llamrei. Look here, human footprints… or a dryad's if there is no scent. They met here."

"Yes Sherlock," Edmund said dryly.

"What?" Peter asked, glancing up.

"Sherlock."

"Who?"

"Never mind," Edmund stared rather smugly into space. Peter looked at him for a moment, then shrugged.

There was silence as they stood around in a group, surveying the braes that tumbled around them and the trees standing at the edge of the forest, mutely watching them.

"I think we should be splitting up," Peter said. "Half of us must go after Llamrei and half after the wild horse. Lord Stagbane, you must follow Llamrei she went across the grass. I can follow the prints of the other horse on the road."

"I will accompany Stagbane," Edmund said.

"As will I," King Lune said. "I think the chances are higher that he is with Llamrei then the other horse. Do you great detectives want a rendezvous point?"

"We don't really need one," Peter said. "It's a braw day for a ride and we'll all end up back at the castle eventually."

"Remember," King Lune said, tapping the hunting horn slung over his saddle bow. "Two blasts if you find him."

"Well," Edmund said swinging his horse away. "Let's get on with it, shall we?"

"Mind if I tag along with you?" Corin asked, glancing down at Peter. Peter winked at him in response and swung aboard Ares, his black horse.

~o*o~

"Are you not Prince Corin?"

Cor opened his eyes again, staring foggily at the face that hovered above his own. His brain was strangely slow and thick and the circulation had ceased to run in his hands where they were tied behind him.

"No," he said again, letting his head fall back against the stone, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lloergan still twisting, now using his strong, white teeth to bite at the rope, now swinging on it. Cor knew that he was very close to breaking loose.

"Who are you then?"

"Shasta, the fisherman's son," Cor said. "I'm from Calormen."

The dryad of the silver birch stood straighter, staring at him. "Your face puts the lie to what you say, yet your speech agrees with it." She turned to the dryad next to her. "You told me that he was a prince, of royal blood."

"I thought he was."

"But he is a fisherman's son!" she spat in disgust.

"Will you let me go?" Cor asked dully.

"You may be only a half grown man, but you are still dangerous," the silver birch turned to him again. "I will think on it."

"Let my horse go."

"He is to be sacrificed."

Cor's blood ran cold in his veins.

~o*o~

Corin remained silent as they rode. He was older now and more master of his tongue, yet he longed to ask what Peter was thinking. Steadily, he pulled up his horse as Peter dismounted to read the story written in hoof prints in the road.

Corin watched his companion closely, trying to read what he was thinking. Peter had long ago learned the art of concealing his emotions and his beard made his face completely unreadable. Corin's eyes fell to his hands, holding the reins lightly. King Peter had powerful hands, the strongest Corin had ever seen, yet they were also supremely gentle and Corin had often thought that nothing can be truly gentle that is not very strong.

"Beards aren't very helpful when one is trying to read expressions. In fact, they're dashed inconvenient," Corin said at last. "Definitely a negative."

"What that?" Peter asked glancing at him, his eyes twinkling.

"Well, I can't exactly tell what you're thinking hiding behind that thatch," Corin added. "You could be reflecting on anything from fried eggs to whether talking elephants clip their toenails. I'm in the dark here."

"I'm thinking it's me in the dark," Peter said with a grin.

"In the shadow of your beard."

"Shivering in the shade," Peter said. "Why these thoughts on beards?"

"I'm trying to decide whether I'll grow one or not, you know, someday when it won't look too moth-eaten," Corin said. "What did father look like without a beard?"

"A lot like you, actually." Peter said. "I think we both grew beards to give us something to hide behind in tight situations; if I have to be a wall flower, at least I can be a wall flower with gravitas. 'High King' is a generally misunderstood and rather stereotyped role. The job description ought to mention the necessity of a beard. At least it makes me look impressive… or like a hardened criminal. The critics on undecided on that one. Ever since I broke my nose there's been no getting around looking disreputable."

"I never found you less impressive without it," Corin pointed out. "I did have some trouble realizing when I was very small that you with a beard and you without a beard were both the same person."

"So did I," Peter said. "But you know Susan, she hates beards and I've only recently gotten permission to wear one full time."

"Didn't King Edmund try out a beard once?" Corin asked.

"With frightening results," Peter said thoughtfully. "That was one beard I wasn't sorry to see the last of."

"When did you grow your first beard?" Corin asked curiously.

"Oh, that one? That one ended in disaster and humiliation." Peter sat back and laughed. "I was a very young and slightly demoralized High King, I was new at the job and seeing as it didn't exactly come with a manual or a six week course, I was over my head. So I ran away."

"You  _ran_  away?" Corin was incredulous. "You could have been fired!"

"Or at least had my pay withheld," Peter added. "Anyway, it was only for a week, and I was planning on coming back. I had a great time, fishing and sleeping and generally doing nothing in particular. I rode back the happiest High King in the world and feeling distinctly sixteen again. To make a long story short I was arrested and jailed by an overzealous centaur when I arrived in Paravel."

"What were the charges?"

"Loitering suspiciously and other heinous crimes against human kind which included riding after dark and being intoxicated in the streets (I wasn't). I'd grown a beard, you see, and it wasn't flattering, oh, and I'd busted a few new holes in my clothes."

"What did you do?"

"What anyone would have done."

"Broke out?" Corin didn't hesitate.

"Aye, the very thing… the bars needed to be replaced anyway." Peter said. "There was a meeting of the council that night that I couldn't be late for. I did end up standing trial later, though, and had to pay a fine for damages against public property. The beard wasn't mentioned. The affair blew up, some people were incensed that their High King was a jail bird and there was even a petition demanding that I be removed. Fortunately it all blew over by Christmas time. So what have you decided about the beard?"

"What about it?"

"Are they good or bad?"

"It depends on the person," Corin said, looking suddenly serious. "As you mentioned, King Edmund looks weird with a beard and I don't think my brother would be terribly fetching in one either."

"Aye, I agree with you there." Peter said. They both were silent for some time then, as the horses thundered down the road. Peter, subconsciously, was still following the hoof prints, his eyes glued to the dirt under the horses' feet. At last he spoke. "It's been two years, now, hasn't it?"

"Yes," Corin was silent.

"What's it like having a brother walk out of the blue?"

"Strange? Good?" Corin grinned. "Great, really. I've been groomed since I was little to be king and It's rather nice that's he's come along. They've all forgotten about me and I'm sort of having a second childhood, you know, stirring things up. He's the heir now and that makes me the spare."

"Oh, aye," Peter was grinning when he glanced at him. "Though, sometimes I think you double as the puncture."

"I think he's gotten over his Calormene slave mentality and he reads awfully well." Corin said, ignoring him. "I've been teaching him to do crossword puzzles and Aravis gets him to diagram sentences, he can do it better than I can now. It took him forever before he stopped calling me, 'your highness'."

"What made him stop?"

"I threatened him with death and imprisonment," Corin said coolly. "And told him I wouldn't teach him to read until he stopped. I'm sorry to say I knocked him down the next time he did it, that may have helped."

Corin was older and more self assured than he had been and he couldn't help grinning at the things he wouldn't have thought twice about two years ago.

"What was it like for you? When he showed up?" Corin asked.

"A stiff dose of double trouble and mayhem," Peter said with a laugh and Corin laughed with him. When he was with Peter he could forget about growing up and all the unpleasantries that come hand and glove with adulthood (beards included). When he was with Peter he felt like a little boy again, always learning. Peter had much to give and Corin still had a whole lifetime to learn. He remembered camping trips with the Kings, when they would life for days off the land, learning the ways of the animals, reading the trees to tell their direction, navigating by the stars.

"It's a beautiful day, isn't it?" Peter said the next time he swung off his horse. "Look at the trees, all aglow with color; they look like they're burning up around us."

"Pity we forgot the fire buckets," Corin commented.

Peter laughed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pair Dadeni ought to be recognized at once by connoisseurs of Welsh mythology. The magical kettle of the Irish King Matholwch (not much Irish about that name!) plays a key role in the Mabinogion and is used for bringing the dead to life. Those who have read The Black Cauldron by Lloyd Alexander will recognize it at once as the cauldron Taran went to such lengths to find.
> 
> ~Psyche


	5. Isis

_Only a life lived for others is worth living._

~ Albert Einstein

* * *

Susan had summoned a small band of centaurs and they set out immediately, Aravis begging to go along.

"You can't just leave me behind," she'd said.

They rode hard, the horses' breathing coming fast as they thundered over the ground. The hills rose and fell around them, seeming, as they galloped like the waves of a great, green sea, stretching for miles in all directions. Susan glanced at the compass in her hand, watching the needle quiver, as she drove her black mare on almost savagely.

There had been one last thing she had asked the dryad of the aspen tree just as they were readying to mount their horses in the courtyard.

"Is there any way to destroy the cauldron?" Susan had asked, as she slipped through toe of her boot into the stirrup and pulled herself into the saddle. She gathered up the reins, holding her dancing mare in check.

The dryad was silent, then she looked up, meeting Susan's eyes. "That is the worst thing of all."

"Tell me."

"In order for the cauldron to be destroyed, a living soul must willingly throw himself into it. Then it will shatter."

An hour passed and as the valley fell away below them to reveal a stretch of woods Susan pulled up her horse.

"I think we must separate," she said, turning to Chiron, one of the centaurs that stood next to her.

"Lady, I will not leave you," he replied, his face as unreadable as marble.

"We must!" Lucy said exclaimed. "We'll find them more quickly if we split up. Don't you see? We might miss them entirely this way."

"We will also die more quickly if there is danger," Chiron replied. "But if it is your wish, I will send some of my men north and south, but I will go with you."

"Very well," Susan said.

The orders were given and the centaurs split, trotting down the draw, their plaids over their shoulders, their claymores on their backs. There were ten centaurs and Chiron and they made three parties of five.

"We will continue west," Susan said, urging her horse forward.

Aravis rode behind, her horse breaking into a trot. Her heart was heavy as stone as she rode, thinking of Cor. She looked up to see Lucy looking at her, her face creased with worry.

"We'll find him," Lucy said, almost fiercely.

Aravis stared at her a moment, "Don't you see?" she said at last. "I don't think we will… not alive. You don't know anything about the rites of Zardeena."

The forest they entered with very dark and the trees were mossy sided, growing bent above them, their leaves turned golden in the evening light. The horses walked soft footed through clover and moss, the only sounds the snorting of their breathing. Subconsciously, Susan's hand stole to her bow.

There was a strange peril in the wood and they could not see it.

Then Chiron fell, an arrow through his side.

* * *

"It's true, isn't it?" King Lune said at last, glancing over at his silent companion as they rode slowly through the woods, their horses' manes lit in the evening light that was slanting between the silent trees. Lord Stagbane was dashing ahead, leaping like a grey fury through the dizzying play of light on shivering ferns and King Edmund's blue eyes had taken on a strangely glazed look.

"What?" Edmund snapped to attention.

"Your royal brother told me once and I was understandably incredulous," King Lune continued, enjoying the baffled expression on his companion's face.

"What?" Edmund demanded.

"You people are bonafide anomalies. I thought I was strange, then I met you." King Lune reached up and snapped a brilliant red leaf off an overhanging branch as his horse cantered by.

"Rest assured, my friend, you  _are_  strange," Edmund said. "You always resort to a rather irritating form of torture."

"Begging your pardon, of course," King Lune said. "But I'd never actually seen you in the act before."

"Doing what?!" Edmund exclaimed, mentally tying up King Lune and suspending him from the nearest tree.

"Number puzzles in your head," King Lune finished.

Edmund stared up at the sky until he'd brought his breathing to a more manageable level. "Is  _that_  all?"

"Is that all?" King Lune exclaimed. "My dear young sir! The possibility of finding someone who can do number puzzles on a piece of paper without pulling his hair out in the process is very slim indeed, but in your head? I take my cap off to you, sir. I suppose you play chess in your head, also?"

"No, actually, that's Peter," Edmund said.

King Lune groaned. "I should have known. You people are so smart it scares me sometimes…Look sharp, I do believe our friend, Stagbane has something to say to us."

~o*o~

Lloergan broke free.

With one final, frantic pull, the rope had snapped and he fell back, almost losing his footing as he wheeled and galloped, threading between the standing stones. Cor's heart went with him, with both grief and sorrow. He had grown to love the horse dearly and he knew as he watched the white tail slip between the stones that he would never see the gray colt again.

"Head him off! Don't let him escape!" the silver birch called, her voice ringing like steel between the stones. Dryads ran to catch him, but Lloergan was half crazed with fear, his eyes rolling in his head and he crashed through them, knocking them aside with his flying body.

Then he was gone, leaping into the hills to be away.

Cor closed his eyes.

He was terribly weary and his night of riding had worn him thin, his head dropped and his eyes closed against his will now that he need worry about the horse no longer.

Lloergan would be wild again, perhaps collecting his own band of mares, but the name would always be with him, following him like a shadow and fluttering between his ears like his silver mane. He had been touched by a man and would never be the same again.

Cor's dreams were troubled, in his half consciousness, he was standing on the beach looking out to sea to watch the breakers rolling in, like white maned horses, like Lloergan, the silver stallion. There was a net on the beach, spread out in the sun to dry and as he looked at it, he saw Queen Susan and Queen Lucy and Aravis coming to him, then stumbling, their feet caught in the net. Cor tried to shout, to warn them, but he could not speak and it was too late.

"I am Isis."

Cor opened his eyes again, looking up to see the tall figure of the silver birch standing beyond his stone.

"We heard you were," it was Susan's voice he heard next, that beautiful, low, lilting voice of hers that could lull anyone.

"I have no grudge against you," Isis said. "Go before it is too late. Go and never come back. Forget what you have seen here."

"And yet I cannot," Susan said. "I have come to bargain for his life."

Cor's eyes slowly grew accustomed to the dark and he saw Susan in a dark cloak, her black hair gleaming in torchlight and beside her, Lucy, with golden hair, her hands working in the folds of her cloak. Armed dryads stood all around them, very tall and beautiful and frightening.

Another, smaller figure stood behind them and as she turned to look at him, he saw that it was Aravis standing among the dryads, her dark eyes seeking his out and full of pain.

"And why would his life mean so much to you?" Isis asked. "Men are generally useless and disgusting creatures."

"I promised his mother long ago that I would care for him as if he were my own," Susan said. "I love him as if he were my own son. I can only ask this, take me in his place."

"Susan!" Lucy gasped.

"Then he is of royal blood," Isis threw her head back and looked at Susan with steel eyes. "Lady, I have no grudge against you. It is your brothers I hate. I meant to spare your lives when I came to take Narnia and offer you a place in the sisterhood. You are worthy.

"If you band with me, you would become High Queen of Narnia and empress of the Lone Island. Imagine what power could be yours!"

Susan was still, as if Isis had struck her, "Madam, I swore allegiance to the High King, I swore that his cause was my cause, that his enemy was my enemy. Can I break my word?"

"You swore under force," Isis said quietly.

"But I did not, I swore of my own free will," Susan met Isis eyes. They were of a similar height, Isis and she, tall and graceful. Susan's hair was black, gleaming as if with gems, but Isis' hair was silver as birch leaves. "I could never hope to fill those shoes."

"We would never want any part in it," Lucy found her voice. "We would rather be slain then join you. Would we throw away all that we have fought and labored for?"

"Then you shall be sacrificed to Zardeena, our lady," Isis said. "But he will be the first in the cauldron."

Susan knelt down, "I beg you, spare his life."

"You are all in my hands," Isis said. "You have nothing to bargain."

"Except the wrath of Narnia," Lucy said coldly. "Our brothers will not tolerate such a thing."

"Your brothers are men and men are weak and useless, they have no legitimate emotions, no strength or passion. No, I do not fear them; they will fall prey to us as all men have in the past." Isis said with a thin smile. "Narnia will fall before the ranks of my deathless warriors and you will lead them, tied to me in mind and body. I will have no mercy. When the moon is overhead, you will be offered."

~o*o~

King Lune and Edmund came across Llamrei near dusk. She was standing in a meadow, like a mare that had lost her colt, her eyes wide in fear. When she saw them, she ran to them as if they were a refuge.

King Lune dismounted and spoke to her with gentle words, then he glanced up to where Edmund sat mute in the saddle. "Now what do you propose?"

"We find Peter and join ranks," Edmund said. "I believe more is afoot than we originally believed."

"Good counsel, my friend," King Lune said, swinging back into the saddle, "Lord Stagbane? Do you think you can find our royal companions' scent?"

"With pleasure, your majesty," Lord Stagbane said, "I have been picking them up for some time now. The wind is right."

"Excellent," King Lune said. "Lead on."

Lord Stagbane swung around, then paused, one foreleg cocked. "I smell something else, too," he said, puzzled.

"What?" Edmund asked.

"I'm not sure… but I think… no, I'm quite certain," Lord Stagbane looked up at him. "I believe your royal sisters are on the wind currents."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The probability that Cor and Corin were based on the stellar Castor and Pollux is a good one. They are brothers; either twins or half brothers. The story differs, but the most accepted version goes that Castor was the mortal son of the King of Sparta, while Pollux was the immortal son of Zeus. In The Horse and His Boy, Shasta is a nobody while Corin is a Prince. When they meet for the first time, they look alike, but there the resemblance ends.
> 
> Pollux loved his brother so much that he sought to share his immorality with Castor. Zeus respected his wishes and places them both in the sky in the form of a constellation, Gemini… the twins.
> 
> Their business is to save ships in distress and are associated with St. Elmo's fire, that strange and wonderful green light that appears on the ends of a ship's spars during stormy weather. They are both connected with white horses and horse taming, though, according to Homer, Castor is the greatest horsemen of the two. "…Castor, tamer of horses, Polydeuces (Pollux), good as a boxer."
> 
> ~Psyche


	6. The Wild Hunt

_Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new._

~ 2 Corinthians 5:17

* * *

"The light is bad," Peter said.

"I was noticing that," Corin commented.

With dusk, Peter had to dismount more and more often to be sure of the tracks and now, with the falling of the light and the burst of colors on the western horizon, he could hardly be sure of the prints.

They had nearly given up before they had stopped a woodcutter returning to his home. He told them that he had seen a woman and a white horse and a boy traveling west.

"What's in the west?" Peter asked.

The woodcutter was suddenly silent, "I don't know anything, I tell you."

He left them then, and they felt slightly unsettled as they continued on, the horses leaving the woods behind and mounting the hill. They saw torchlight ahead, glowing beyond the braes in a glen to the west and Peter decided to leave the horses ground tied in a little knoll and go on foot.

"A house, maybe?" Corin asked.

"Perhaps," Peter said.

But as they came closer, they saw that it was not a house and with a quick motion, Peter dropped to the ground and Corin did the same. They were on a ridge, looking down into the glen and they could see the glow of torchlight and many figures standing in a circle. All around them, like mighty sentries, stood a double ring of standing stones, some crumbling and falling, but most standing tall in the torchlight. In the very middle of the ring was a stone platform.

"What the deuce is that?" Peter whispered incredulously.

"it looks like an exercise in futility," Corin whispered back, after watching the tall, cloaked figures, like so many trees swaying in the wind, circling each other slowly, a strange chanting on the breeze that swept up to them.

They lay there staring, Corin looked up at Peter's face, again trying to read it in the darkness, but it was unreadable. Peter's eyes narrowed as he looked down and his hand suddenly clenched, the sinews standing out under his skin.

"There is one like it at the Stone Table," Peter said at last. "I thought it was the only one, but this is very like it."

"What's it for, then?"

"Sacrifices."

A cold shiver went down Corin's spine and he pressed a little closer to the earth, "What are they sacrificing?"

Peter was silent, "Look yonder, there are people tied up by that stone."

Corin followed Peter's gaze and saw tiny figures lying prostrate on the grass just out of the torchlight. At once, his mind started working, and he was mentally down there already, creeping through the heather in the shadows, slipping around the stone, setting them free…

"Nothing for it then," Corin whispered, sitting up a little.

"What's that?" Peter asked.

"We'll just have to go in and save them," Corin said simply.

"How is it we think so alike?" Peter said, finding Corin's shoulder in the dark and squeezing it. "Slip back and we'll discuss our plan of action."

They wormed backwards until the ridge of the hill concealed them. Peter rolled over, pulling the edge of his cloak around against the chill. Corin sat next to him, eagerly waiting for him to speak.

"Now-" Peter began.

Suddenly a hand closed over his mouth. Like a tiger, Peter whipped around, driving his elbow into his attacker's stomach. He heard a whistling gasp and the other man shifted his grip, trying to get Peter into a head lock with an iron arm. Peter struck him in the side of the head and behind him, he heard a yowl and some thumping and at last a voice hissed, "Good grief Corin! I think you're stronger than me!"

Peter finally threw his opponent and shoved a knee down on his chest, pinning him down with his right arm. "Edmund! You idiot! What the deuce are you playing at?"

"You didn't exactly give me a chance to explain," Edmund whispered, breathing hard.

"Well, neither did you," Peter said, still miffed as he let him up.

"How did you know if was me?" Edmund asked, rubbing his sore jaw.

"I've fought with you enough to know your style."

In the shadows, King Lune was slowly recovering.

"Look here, father," Corin was whispering angrily. "You can't just jump on a chap like that!"

"I've found that out, lad," King Lune said, a hint of a laugh in his voice.

~o*o~

They were tied up and thrown at Cor's feet, Lucy was nearest him and he could hear her sobbing, almost weeping with anger.

"I'm sorry," Susan said at last. "I played and lost."

"Why are you here?" Cor whispered.

"We came to find you, and the others, but we were captured in the woods," Susan explained, trying to sit up. "Now we're fair trapped. They took our weapons and we're tied too tight."

"Try going back to back with me," Aravis whispered, squirming around until she could touch Lucy's tied hands with her own, "Can you feel the knots?"

Lucy's fingers were already going numb, but she fiddled with them, at last giving up in exasperation. "No! They're too tight."

"Did you see the cauldron?" Susan asked at last, her voice very calm. "It's a beautiful thing, all silver work. I looked at it as I passed it. It's hard to believe that such a wicked thing could be so beautiful."

"Horrible, horrible."Lucy whispered and Susan saw tears glimmering on her cheeks.

There was silence and they lay in the darkness, staring up at the stars that were slowly stepping out across the great black marble expanse of the sky. Lucy, as she lay there, her hair soaked in dew could almost imagine them as ladies and gentlemen, grouping for some beautiful, slow dance across the heavens.

In the shadows, just beyond their stone, they saw pale shapes just hovering over the ground, melting away when they looked directly at them. There were glowing eyes in a corner that vanished when they tried to see what it was.

"Susan," Lucy's voice was strangely steady. "There is something wicket afoot. This isn't just a gathering of grazed dryads."

"I know," Susan breathed.

And Cor from his place sitting upright against the stone suddenly had an urge to put everything right before it was too late.

"Aravis?" Cor said, his voice strangely husky. "I wasn't really trying to tell you what to do… I was just trying to help-"

"Shut up," Aravis said, a little more sharply then she'd meant.

Cor was silent, "I was hoping… you'd forgive me. I don't know why we always have to argue…"

"I was the one in the wrong, Cor," Aravis said, her voice gentler. "Do you forgive  _me_?"

"Then it's all right?" Cor was slightly incredulous. "You aren't angry with me anymore?"

"Of  _course_  not." Aravis said, her voice catching. "How could I be? I know I'm a little idiot sometimes, but there is  _some_  good in me."

"You're not an idiot, Aravis," Cor said and his voice was hurt, as if someone had insulted him. "I don't know how you could think that."

"Just shut up." Aravis sounded almost happy.

Susan laughed and Lucy looked at her sharply. It was such a strange thing to do in that place at that time, but Susan only shook her head. Cor and Aravis were always disagreeing and making it up again in such a fierce, funny sort of way, that apologizing was almost an argument in itself.

"Well, I'm glad that's all right, anyway," Cor said, relief in his voice and he realized that it had been bothering him since it happened.

Love falls into four categories; and as Cor sat there, his back against the stone and looked at them, lying at his feet, he knew he loved them. He loved Lucy as a sister, Susan almost as a mother and Aravis most of all, he had always loved her. But there was another love then those three, the greatest love of all that transcended the others and made them fade. With this love, there was no romance, nor affection, no happiness, only an aching pain, a pain that made him feel that he could die happy if only he could spare them somehow; die to see them live.

Cor closed his eyes and laid his head back against the cold stone and felt pain, not for himself, but for them.

"Whether we live or die, Aslan will be our good lord," Susan said softly almost as if she could read what he was thinking.

Then Cor almost cried out, because warm hands touched his numbed once.

"Wisht," Peter said softly. "Why is it we are always having to save you people?"

Susan muffled a cry of delight as Edmund pulled her into a sitting position, and drew a cold, gleaming knife to slice her bonds and Aravis could almost have kissed Corin as he knelt beside her to free her.

"Why are you here?" Lucy whispered as King Lune lifted her and carried her into the shadows to set her free.

"Hush," he said.

"They took our weapons, they are piled over there." Lucy whispered as King Lune rubbed her cold hands, engulfing them in his large ones.

"Villains and murders," he whispered. "I often wonder if the gentle sex can be the cruelest."

"I don't just wonder." Lucy whispered. "What about the weapons?"

"Let Edmund go," Peter whispered, kneeling next to her. "He can move the most unseen of any of us."

They had slipped around the stones to sink down in the heather, watching as Edmund melted into the shadows. Then they turned their attention to the goings on in the middle of the circle of stones. The chanting in the air seemed to make the ground throb as the dryads were danced, interlacing between each other, sometimes appearing as women and sometimes as trees. Isis towered above them on the stone platform, a pair of deer's antlers on her head.

"Cor, let me look at you," Susan whispered, reaching out to assure herself that he was in once piece. "You were late for supper and breakfast!"

"Heinous crime," Corin said.

"I'm sorry, I really am," Cor whispered.

"Where is the horse, then, lad?" King Lune asked, his voice gentle.

"Escaped." Cor said quietly. "It was better that way."

"What is the cauldron for?" Peter whispered at last, seeing it gleam in the fire light, huge and beautiful on the stone pedestal.

"We'll explain later," Susan said.

They sat in the shadows, breathing hard, then Peter signaled them. Lucy's heart was fluttering in her chest as they struggled to their feet and slipped away into the darkness. King Lune was still beside her, his arm around her shoulders and suddenly it tightened convulsively.

"Deidre!" he whispered.

"What?" Lucy asked.

"Press on, press on!" his voice was strained and he nearly lifted her along.

"What is it?"

Then she saw.

A woman was standing in the moonlight, as if wading through the heather, moonlight on her hair, moonlight on her beautiful upturned face. She was dead; Lucy had no doubt when she looked into her lifeless eyes. She knew who it was or who it was supposed to be.

"It's a trick," King Lune whispered. "Don't look at it."

It was Deidre, King Lune's dead queen.

~o*o~

They set back at a forced paced. Edmund had returned with both the weapons and the girls' horses and now they galloped up the moonlit braes, watching the stars spangle the sky. They were returning to the castle to collect enough soldiers to overcome the dryads.

Edmund was troubled as he rode. As he'd slipped through the shadows, from stone to stone to the place where the weapons were and he horses stood. Isis' voice had rung through the air, chilling his bones as he wormed through the dewed heather, watching the torchlight flicker over cold stone.

He had paused, his face buried in the heather, afraid they would see the whites of his eyes. His cloak was tight around his shoulders like a bat's wings and hesitantly, he had looked up to see what they were doing.

They were standing in a circle around her, swaying as if the wind blew them. There was a curious smell in the air and Isis was swinging a censor of burning perfume. Edmund felt strangely light headed and as he struggled forward again, a wave of dizziness staggered him and he lay down again in the dewed heather, breathing deeply.

"When we have taken Narnia, we will slay the High King and let his blood run in the halls of Cair Paravel."

For a moment, Edmund thought of going back, leaving the weapons where they were, forgetting about the horses and just leaving that place. He felt trapped, deeply oppressed as if a great, dark cavern were yawning to swallow him.

"Then we will find the traitor, the one who calls himself King Edmund!"

The words struck strangely hard, so hard, his breath was almost knocked from him and he hardly understood why. Never had he felt guilty for what he had done, never since Aslan had spoken to him, but now, suddenly in that horrible place a wave of guilt so terrible nearly paralyzed him in his tracks.

What had he done?

It was then that he saw  _her_  standing as if an extension of the shadows. She did not move, only stood silently and he found that though he tried, he could not meet her eyes. It was Jadis, like a strange shadow of a dream, looming above him.

Sobbing for breath, he struggled on, even in his giddy state he barely made a ripple in the heather, just as a black panther slips through a forest. There were the weapons, piled under the tree and his groping fingers found them, bows and quivers and an assortment of knives.

"We will have his blood, that blood that we have been cheated of for so long."

Edmund looked back, it still seemed that Jadis stood by the stone, motionless, colorless and silent, then he stood cautiously in the shadows. The horses were hobbled a few feet away, watching the torchlight with bright, liquid eyes. He released their hobbles, slinging the quivers over their saddles. Then he seized the mane of Susan's black mare and rode into the night.

He reached the others where they waited for him, there was a quick change of horses and they were riding hard, galloping up the brae and down into the vale at the other side. As they rode, Susan told the story of Cauldron that stood on the pedestal among the standing stones.

"Then it can only be destroyed if a willing victim throws himself in it?" Peter said.

Susan closed her eyes. "Yes."

And Lucy knew, though she said nothing, that none of those that rode together that night would hesitate to make that sacrifice.

~o*o~

Peter noticed that Edmund was strangely silent, but thought nothing of it. Now they rode hard and there was no time for conversation.

Edmund had often watched whitesmiths at work, dwarves mostly, deep in their caves underground. They would melt the silver ore, heating it until the impurities were oxidized. The smith had to watch the silver every moment - too much heat and the silver would evaporate and be lost, too little and the impurities would not be extracted from it. As the purified silver cooled from red hot, it took on a brilliant metallic luster, more reflective than even a mirror. When the silversmith could see his face reflected back without a mar, he knew the silver was pure.

_"So, I long to see my face in you,"_  Aslan had said, his voice like golden velvet.

But could he?

Peter had fallen back, watching their rear, his hand resting gently on the black neck of his horse. Edmund fell back to ride beside him.

"What's eating you?" Peter said at last, breaking the painful silence.

"Peter, do you ever blame me?" Edmund burst out at last, able to hold it in no longer.

"Blame you for what?" there was surprise in Peter's voice.

"For what I did?" Edmund asked. "For being a traitor?"

Peter was silent, his face suddenly still. "What brings this up?" he asked at last. "It never worried you before?"

"Now it does, now it does."

"You told me once that you started new, that your old self was no more," Peter said. "How can I blame you, when it was not what you are now that did it? The scale is balanced, Aslan paid the price."

"Exactly," Edmund said. "It should have been me."

"Edmund," Peter said suddenly. "I don't know why you bring this up, but this is neither the time nor the place to speak of it."

"But-"

"We will speak of this later," Peter spurred his horse forward almost savagely and Edmund rode miserably behind.

It was then that Stagbane shouted up to them that he heard the call of hounds.

"They're on our trail!"

After that there was no talking and they spurred their horses still faster, their manes streaming in the moonlight. Earth flew under their hooves and all around them; the leaves of autumn spiraled down, flashing around them as if they were dipped in silver.

They could all hear the full throated voices of the hounds now and knew in their hearts that dryads could run like stags, unflagging as a horse and their own mounts were weary. The fingers of dawn were brushing the horizon when Peter pulled up his horse, swinging it around so his back was to a sheer cliff of sandstone that rose out of the forest; he exchanged a glance with King Lune, then turned to the others.

"We must stand and fight," he called. "We can outrun them no longer."

And the moon brushed aside her veil of clouds and looked down at them with face of silver.

~o*o~

They saw the dryads a few minutes later, as they stood shoulder to shoulder, their blades drawn, ready for battle. King Lune's eyes flashed and Cor and Corin looked strangely alike as they stood side by side, watching the trees. Susan, Lucy and Aravis stood further up the hill, flexing their bows and checking their arrows.

"Edmund." Peter said once, letting his hand fall on his brother's shoulder, but he said no more.

The dryads were running fleet as deer, their skirts girded up; their arms bear as their hair streamed in the winds. They looked like amazons, fair warrior maidens with eyes cold as steel and the hounds swung all around them, their eyes glowing in the darkness like the eyes of jack o' lanterns. The companions drew their swords and kissed the blades, standing at the ready. Edmund, by Peter's side, felt a sudden surge of grim satisfaction. If he must die, let it be in battle, beside those he loved… for Narnia.

Then the dryads drew their swords. Isis came towards them, her bare arms silver in the moonlight, her hair flowing like white light over her shoulders. She was beautiful and frightening and her eyes were cold as she raised her blade and swung at Peter. He parried the blow and at once, the dryads fell upon them.

Susan drew her bow to her ear and let fly arrow after perfectly aimed arrow. Aravis and Lucy stood beside her, she could hear the cracking of their muscles and the raggedness of their breath as they bent their bows, leaning into the stiff yew wood until it bent, gleaming; the arrow heads burning in the moonlight. From where they stood, they were better able to take stock of the battle and the deep woods all around them and the trees bent into weird and wonderful shapes.

There were things flitting all around them, strange faces, eyes gleaming in the darkness. The hounds were circling them, massive creatures with shoulders reaching well above the girls' waists and in the deepest part of the wood, they heard the long blast of a hunting horn and Aravis uttered a cry of horror.

"What is it?" Susan asked, letting fly another arrow.

"It is Gwynn the Hunter," Aravis said softly. "It is the wild hunt, the walk of the dead."

It was an uneven battle, even for warriors of such prowess as the kings and princes that stood there. Rhindon flashed and grew stained with blood, but more came even as they fell.

"Together! Keep together!" King Lune roared, seizing Cor by the collar and hauling him back as he stumbled under the onslaught. Under their press, they strove to stay together, keeping their bulwark impenetrable, but it was a failing cause and first Cor, the least experienced of them all, was separated and set upon by the dryads.

"Keep them alive!" Isis screamed.

Corin broke next, as he attempted to fight his way to his brother and free him.

"Corin!" King Lune bellowed, but it was no use.

Then the call of the horn came again and Susan looked up at the ridge behind them and the sky beyond it, turning silver with morning light. A silhouette of a great black horse came to a halt; the rider was incredibly tall and a pair of antlers crowned his head. Then the dryads came down from behind them and struggled with Susan, Aravis and Lucy, forcing them down. Lucy looked up and her last view before she was struck on her head was of Peter and Edmund, standing back to back in a sea of dryads, their swords flashing the morning light, glimmering like lightning bolts in their hands.

Then she knew no more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Artemis was the Greek virgin goddess of the hunt. She was the protector of maidens and innocents, but often required human sacrifices. She was notorious for loosing her hounds and hunting down men until they died from exhaustion. One of her alter-egos, Hecate, was a fearsome witch like creature who was associated with the moon and poisons plants, making Artemis a sort of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
> 
> The Wild Hunt is an ancient folk myth rampant across Europe. The fundamental premise in all instances is the same: a phantasmal, spectral group of huntsmen with the accouterments of hunting, with horses and hounds in mad pursuit across the skies or along the ground, or just above it. Associated with the Wild Hunt is Gwyn ap Nudd, the Welsh Hunter, coursing the sky with his hounds.
> 
> ~Psyche


	7. The Reflection

_Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue_

_I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace_

_Where never lark, or even eagle flew._

_And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod_

_The high untrespassed sanctity of space_

_Put out my hand, and touched the face of God._

~ John Magee

* * *

The cauldron, Pair Dadeni, gleamed silver in the sunlight, impossibly beautiful with all its intricacies and they looked up at it, marveling at it and hating it.

Peter was the first to come to himself and he looked to his companions, his heart melting in relief when he saw that they were all accounted for and alive, though they were bruised and bloody; all except Lord Stagbane, who was nowhere to be seen.

"Who will be first in the cauldron?" Isis stood before them, viewing them from her great height. "Who will become my first warrior?"

"If we must choose, let it be me," with great effort, Peter sat up.

Isis looked at him closely for a moment, "No, I think not. Let it be the traitor."

Peter fell back against the stone and stared up at the sky, trying to steady his hammering heart. He  _knew_  what Edmund was about to do.

"Bring him forward."

"Untie my feet," Edmund said, his voice strangely calm. "I will walk on my own."

He could not bear to look at their faces, yet he rejoiced to be first. He saw Susan's face damp with tears; Lucy, still unconscious on the grass; Peter, looking at him steadily, willing him to be strong.

He would be strong.

The cauldron was very large, as it stood on the stone platform, glancing the sunlight. It could more have been called a silver bowl, a huge one, though it had ornamental handles, beautifully wrought.

 _Silver_ , Edmund thought and he came up the steps to it slowly and looked down to see that it was filled with water, reflecting the marbled sky like a mirror.

"Do you see it?" Isis said quietly. "This caldron will show you who you truly are. We are all mirrors; we all reflect something outside of ourselves. Come see your likeness. Look into it and despair."

Edmund took a shuddering breath.

 _You told me once that you started new, that your old self was no more_ , Peter had said and Edmund knew in his heart that he was right.

The  _other_  life was gone, it was dead, he had become a new person. All had changed that day he stood before Aslan, his head bowed, guilty, accountable and deserving of death. But Aslan's voice had quelled the silence, as rich as velvet and leaping water in summer and had told him he was forgiven.

And the birds sang and Edmund's tears sprang free as his heart was unlocked inside him. He was able to look into the Lion's face, look and see the nobility there.

He hadn't realized then that nothing comes without a price. He had not paid for his own wrongs, but the Lion had, in full. And if Edmund doubted or ridiculed himself for his crimes against Narnia and his siblings, then he was devaluing the tremendous price Aslan had paid.

The moment Aslan died, the scales were balanced and Edmund began anew.

_We cannot shine on our own, we are darkness, he is light. By looking at him, we may shine with his light, not our own, because we have none to give._

He closed his eyes now, the tears welling as he realized what he had done. With new courage, he stepped up to the cauldron and looked into the clear, gleaming surface.

It was Aslan's face that was looking back at him.

~o*o~

The others watched him, too full of sorrow to watch, but unable to look away as he walked proudly to the cauldron. Lucy woke then and muffled a cry of horror as she saw him standing there on the platform, Isis near him, her sword drawn, the blade gleaming.

There was a sudden horrible remembrance in her heart when she was still very small, many, many years ago. The great stretch of the Eastern Sea spread silver before her inner eye, she could almost feel Susan's arms around her and she could see Him.

The Lion.

And the horde.

He had walked to the table, proud and humble in a single moment, patient and gentle, standing ready to be offered.

For Edmund's sake.

Edmund hesitated on the platform, then looked at them all, a strange expression in his eyes, then he knelt down before the cauldron and looked at the surface of the water.

There was a moment of silence.

Then there was the bone chilling sound of war cries, wild banshee yells and the skirl of the pipes. It was then that the centaurs came charging between the standing stones, mighty warriors, their claymores swinging, Lord Stagbane leaping at their front, Ahearn bringing up the rear, one hand clasped to a bloody side, the other swinging his dirk.

Edmund was the first to react.

He swung sideways and knocked Isis off balance with a swing of his leg. His hands were still tied behind him, but he drove his forehead into her face, cracking her nose and sending her staggering. He had been taught by, and had fought, only the best.

Peter was trying to struggle to his feet, but his ankles were tied and the next moment, Ahern was there, slicing their bonds with quick thrusts of his dirk. Lucy struggled into a sitting position, still groggy and Aravis grabbed her by the arm and pulled her to her feet.

"Come on, run!"

All around them, centaurs reared, their swords flashing. Peter had wrested a sword from a dryad's grasp and had joined their ranks, fighting to Edmund's side to cut his hands free.

"I think we can turn them," Edmund panted, picking up the sword Isis had dropped.

"I'm thinking you're right." Peter said.

The furious onslaught of the centaurs had been too much for the dryads and they fell back, fighting in small groups around the stones for protection. King Lune had found two swords somewhere and was fighting like a fury, blood streaming from a gash on his face as he swung and parried.

"I never knew father could fight like that," Corin said with respect as he fought next to Cor.

Then Susan's voice rose in a shriek and they turned to see what she was saying.

"Stop her!"

Isis was charging through the ranks of centaurs, a sword in her hands. They swung at her, but she parried each blow brilliantly, forcing her way towards the cauldron.

She mounted the steps of the stone platform from where Edmund had toppled her and to the shock of everyone, she threw her sword aside.

Then she leapt into the cauldron.

If she could not use it, no one would.

A shock wave swept over them like a physical blow, rippling the grass beyond the standing stones the way wind ripples it in summer, then Pair Dadeni shattered, the fragments flying out like shrapnel to fall around the lifeless body of Isis.

In the distance, seeming to hover above the very trees, the mist rolled itself over into whirling shapes dashing across the sky. The deep baying of a hound boomed over them three times, reverberating between the standing stones.

"He hunts down the traitors," Aravis whispered and turning to look at her, Edmund realized with a sudden burst of revelation that he was not the traitor, it was Isis, the dryad of the Silver Birch, who had betrayed her own people and had never paid the price.

Gwynn ap nudd, the horned hunter, had captured his prey and was returning home to the sky.

~o*o~

"Well," King Lune commented. "I think we've had ourselves a nice little holiday."

The doors to the sitting room were opened, letting in the chill air and gently ruffling the curtains. If they looked, they could see the stars gleaming above them. They were all sitting in various positions on the floor or draped across the furniture with very little inclination to move.

"I'm thinking you're right," Peter said with a laugh, his hand falling to the ears of one of his hounds. "I was walking through that place again, the standing stones, when I realized that there is a fault line there."

"A fault line?" King Lune said.

"Aye, a crack in the earth. I had been wondering why I felt so light headed near there," Peter said with half a smile. "Anyone breathing in the fumes there would be near insane in short order."

"They were working themselves into a frenzy," King Lune agreed.

"Warrior women," Lucy said from where she sat on the floor. "It was an ugly battle."

"More than that," Peter said. "I don't know about you people, but I was having hallucinations."

There was silence around the room as they all realized that they had all seen those flitting creatures hovering just above the ground and vanishing just as they were looked at straight.

"I think there was more afoot than just fumes from the earth," Lucy said at last.

"As do I," Peter said. "But it certainly helped."

"I'm thinking the next time Cor decides to catch a horse he should bring a body guard with him," Corin said from where he lay on the bearskin before the fire place, his hands behind his head. "Course, I wouldn't mind being it."

"I don't think I'll be catching any more horses for a while," Cor said quietly and slipped out onto the balcony into the arms of the cool night air before they could ask any questions.

"Cor?"A voice said quietly.

He turned to see Aravis standing behind him hesitantly. "Yes?"

"You still have Llamrei."

Cor felt a sudden a rush of gladness that somebody understood. "Yes and I have much more than just Llamrei. But I feel like I've left something unfinished. It's like getting a bad shot at a stag and watching it leap away with your arrow still in its shoulder. It's a bad job and it makes you feel guilty… do you see?"

Cor hardly ever made long speeches and this one left him slightly breathless.

"Yes, I do."

They looked back into the room, at their dear friends and family lying all around. Susan was lying on the sofa, her hands curled around her mug of tea. She was asleep and deserved it after all her care of the injured after the battle.

Peter glanced at Edmund out of the corner of his eye and caught his brother looking at him. Edmund shifted from his place where he leaned on the mantle and knelt down next to Peter's arm chair.

"I have started over. I did a long time ago," he looked up, searching his brother's face for understanding.

"I knew you did," Peter said with a lopsided smile and he reached out and ruffled his brother's hair instead of the ears of his hound.

~o*o~

It was that morning in the rising mist that the phantom colt seemed to materialize like moonlight on silver. They found him standing nervously in the stable yard, whickering to Llamrei where she stood in her stall. No one could go near him and Prince Cor was summoned.

They all stood around and watched as he walked towards the colt very slowly. The gray horse stood still, quivering; his flanks as white as a dove's wing.

Then Cor said his name.

Lloergan.

_Silver._

* * *

_And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people: and they shall say, The LORD is my God._

~ Zechariah 13:9

* * *

_Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new._

~ 2 Corinthians 5:17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The fault in the earth is extremely important. There is not a fault at Stonehenge, but in very early Greece, shepherds noticed that their sheep went into convulsions when they wandered near Delphi. Later an oracle was set up there and white robed priestesses sat on tripods nearly underground, babbling incoherently, their words translated by priests. The fumes rising from underground have often been known to bring on hallucinations.
> 
> ~Rose and Psyche

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry this is so short, but I've often wondered what happened to the Tree of Protection and when Rose came up with this idea one day, I was hooked. There is a story to go with it, but it is only half thought up and may never happen at all. If it does, it will probably be posted in the fall. It's partially based on Stonehenge.
> 
> ~Psyche
> 
> Disclaimer: All rights stolen from C. S. Lewis; any similarity between his characters and ours is fully intended. We have no intention of giving them back. ;)


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